Subscribe Now For A Free Five Step Tutorial
Get a free five-part email course that shows you how to find, validate, and launch your side hustle idea — no experience required.
What It's About
A recruiter helps professionals turn a "no" into a "yes."
Business Model
Skills Required
Complexity
Profit Potential
Words of Wisdom
Alex went to the people he knew. As a recruiter, he was proficient at using LinkedIn—in fact, he had accumulated something like 18,000 connections over the years.
He then thought carefully about the best possible pricing, created three package options (always a good idea), and uploaded a sample resume so that people would have an idea of the value they would receive for their $200. And the results speak for themselves!
Fun Fact
At first, Alex had a hard time selling his services. He had no examples of resumes that he had created on his website, so his customers didn’t trust in his capabilities—especially because he was charging $200.
To solve this problem, Alex offered to redo one of his friend’s resumes for free, in exchange for being able to use it as a sample. After that, his business started to pick up!
Notes from Chris
Episode 663
Alex Benjamin’s life was a combination of excitement and worry. His family had recently welcomed a new baby into the world, but with each new week, his workload was beginning to get lighter and lighter. As a full-time recruiter for pharmaceutical companies, it was Alex’s responsibility to find employees for the most difficult to fill jobs. Essentially, he was a talent scout for the pharmaceutical industry. Around that time, many of the biggest names in pharmacy all seemed to stop hiring within the period of a few months. Since Alex was paid on commission, this meant that his income took a major hit. And with that new baby to support, the timing couldn’t have been worse. You could say it was a tough pill to swallow... Although he was stressed, he knew that failure wasn’t an option. Rather than take the experience as a total loss, he started to read books about entrepreneurship and purpose. Through his reading, he realized that he had been living in autopilot for years. He had only been focusing on short-term goals. Suddenly, he was able to see beyond the tunneled vision he had grown so accustomed to. Alex wasn’t sure that he wanted to be a full-blown entrepreneur, but a side hustle didn’t sound like a bad idea. It wasn’t exactly original, but he felt confident in his ability to stand out. He was going to start a resume building business! As a recruiter, he looked through resumes all day. He saw that even the most highly paid, well-educated professionals struggled to create resumes that were compelling and attractive. And these were people in the medical field with six-figure incomes! Sometimes even the pharmaceutical writers had resumes riddled with grammatical errors and inconsistent formatting. But Alex could help! He knew the ins and outs of resume writing and what attracted employers like the back of his hand. After all, it was his full-time job to hire people. To start, he did a lot of research on LinkedIn to see what his competition was charging. Many of them offered packages in the $100-200 range, but a lot of them also offered larger packages at $500. He didn’t feel that many of the “bonus services” offered in those packages were what people would really value, so he wanted to keep his services in that lower range. The writing on the wall was crisp, clear, and in 12 pt. Times New Roman—Recruiter Written was ready for business! He created a website using Weebly and focused on offering a few different options:1) a professionally written resume for $179.
2) a professionally written resume and a LinkedIn profile complete with keyword optimization for $299.
3) a professionally written resume, a LinkedIn profile complete with keyword optimization, a customized cover letter template, and a customized “thank you” letter template for $399.
Alex says that he averages roughly 8-9 clients a month and brings in an extra $1500—just using a skill that he already had!MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Recruiter Written: If you're looking to make a workplace change, head on over to Alex's website!
- Weebly: The platform that Alex used to create his website for Recruiter Written
- Recruiter Written | Resume Tips: Here are some of Alex's quick and dirty tips for creating a resume that will get noticed
- Telecom Manager Gets Paid to Write Resumes for LinkedIn Connections: After previous side hustle attempts ended in failure, a lifelong corporate employee studies his LinkedIn connections and finds a profitable idea
- These Resume Templates Make $462/month in Passive Income: A student creates a visual resume service to make extra cash, then transitions that service to work smarter, not harder. It now brings in $462 in month in completely passive income
